Women Trafficking in Vietnam

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to Moscow for employment as a waitress at a night club. Wanting to help her parents, she hastily assented. Unknown to Be Huong, the acquaintance and job agency were agents of a sex trafficking ring that sells Vietnamese girls to brothels in Moscow." During her testimony, she mentions that Be Huong would lay out a mat and have sex with as many as four men a day. At the end of the month, she would keep half of her earnings and would give half to the agency. However, that is often not the case because they would often make up excuses to deduct her proceeds. Consequently, Be Huong didn’t make any earnings at all because she still had to pay back the huge debt the agency imposed on her for bringing her to Russia.

In 1991, Nguyen Thi Phuong was lured to the border by traffickers and taken against her will to China, where she was dragged to a house in a small town and sold to become a man’s wife. "I didn’t know how old he was or the name of the place we lived," she said. "I lost my freedom. I had to go everywhere with his family or else I was locked in a room. I had to work hard. When I was tired or sick, they didn’t let me stop working." Captive for more than two years, she escaped when the family forgot to lock her door.

Lack of proper education and awareness of human trafficking are considered the biggest challenge for Vietnam in the goal of decreasing human trafficking in the country. It is mandatory for Vietnamese children, from 6 years old to 14 years old to go to school. However, around 40% - 50% of rural children do not attend school after the age of 14. The Save the Children report in 2005-2006 showed that 93.5% of victims had a low education level, including 13% who were illiterate, 43.3% had only a primary-level education, and 36.2% had a secondary-level education. Consequently, raising the awareness of trafficking has been difficult as well because trafficking information are limited to most regions in Vietnam. Awareness raising campaigns only happen on specials days or at big events which do not target the attention of the majority of the population. Another limitation is most current forms of communication is not applicable to specific groups in Vietnam. For example, brochures and handbooks have been given to people that are illiterate and those who could not read and understand the official language. In addition, people living in remote areas do not have access to television programs that provides information about social issues including human trafficking due to the bad signals. It was found that only 25% of school age children wanted to go back to school after they were trafficked. This is because of the family’s financial issues and the child’s inability to catch up in school due to the long time absence from education.